SAN ANTONIO — When Ken Burns' documentary series “The War” spurred protests in 2007 for not including Latino veterans, the gifted filmmaker who so effortlessly can tell a story seemed totally oblivious to his own.

Ill feelings lingered, however. Today, critics can debate how much real change PBS has undergone in seven years. But in hiring Juan Sepúlveda to join its senior management team in Washington, D.C., it might have made its biggest move to date.

Sepúlveda, a former San Antonian and former host of KLRN's “Conversations,” has been promoting the Latino story for decades.

He told one especially close to his heart. “The Life and Times of Willie Velásquez: Su Voto Es Su Voz,” published in 2005, paid tribute to his mentor, the late founder of the San Antonio-based Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.

A veteran of the Democratic National Committee and White House, Sepúlveda became PBS senior vice president for station services in January. Last week, he was in San Antonio for meetings.

Sepúlveda is a graduate of Harvard, Oxford and Stanford and was the third Latino Rhodes Scholar. He was the first in his family to go to college. His relatives were railroad workers.

Of his Topeka, Kan., hometown, he says, “Brown vs. Board of Education is my neighborhood,” referring to the Supreme Court case that found segregated public schools unconstitutional.

Sepúlveda met Velásquez as an intern at SVREP. Like many others, “I fell under his spell,” Sepúlveda says.

He met Barack Obama in the 1990s, when a professor friend, Robert Putnam, author of “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community,” brought them together for a national advisory panel.

The lone Latino there met the “skinny black guy, a community organizer from Chicago, who was working on Project Vote,” says Sepúlveda, who became an early supporter and ran Obama's campaign in Texas.

Sepúlveda went to Washington as executive director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. He was tapped next by the Democratic National Committee for the president's re-election effort, serving as senior adviser for Hispanic affairs.

It's worth mentioning Sepúlveda met Paula Kerger, president and CEO of PBS, when she came on “Conversations,” which he hosted from 2004 to 2009. She was new to the job. They stayed in touch.

“Fast forward to last November,” he says. She reached out. He was thinking of coming home (meaning San Antonio) and looking for a job outside the administration. She made him promise not to take anything until talking with her.

That was that.

In his new job, Sepúlveda says he'll represent independent stations “to ensure that PBS programs, products and services support each station's connection to its community and audience.”

He'll help reshape his post and will push “the diversity of talent pipeline” at PBS. That will be important, especially given Ray Suarez's departure from PBS' “NewsHour” last year.

Sepúlveda says a lot of Latino content is in the works to follow up from last fall's documentary series, “Latino Americans.” “The number of our Latino viewers doubled after that,” he said. “It's not rocket science.”

He's excited about an upcoming documentary on the life of Ruben Salazar, the Latino journalist killed in the Los Angeles anti-war moratorium marches in 1970, and a Latino-themed historical drama by Dennis Leoni (“Resurrection Blvd”) called “Alta California.”

At 9 p.m. Monday night, KLRN will air “Las Marthas,” a documentary about the young women presented during Laredo's annual George Washington celebration.

Sepúlveda says PBS has to become better at telling its story, and that it's a myth that it's not providing Latino content.

And there's some truth to that. Though the Burns' chapter was indicative of a total lack of awareness and sensitivity, PBS largely has stood alone among non-Spanish-language networks in airing and distributing Latino-themed programs. Serious filmmakers, Latinos included, have found audiences through PBS.

In another pointed example, he said Ken Burns is working on a new series for PBS on the war in Vietnam. Latino veterans will be included. eayala@express-news.net